Education
by OneBADday
Summary: He learned to be strong. He learned to dress well. He learned to fight. He learned that chewing Juicy Fruit is the best cure for skeletons in the closet. He learned that a smile is the best way to frighten someone. "Rusty" Robert Charles Ryan has learned many lessons in his life. Not all of them are as sweet as his appetite.


**Hey everybody! So I just finished my "One Day" story (Gotham fandom, go check it out!) and I recently watched the Ocean's movies with my friends. I remembered how much I absolutely ADORE these movies. Rusty is definitely my favorite character, but I completely love them all. **  
**Here's a little Rusty love.**  
**Disclaimer: I don't own Ocean's, I've never been in "the system" before, and I'm using cliches I've learned from literature and pop culture so I'm sorry if this isn't correct.**

**Enjoy!**

* * *

His father taught him the importance of family and friends.

"Love," he would say, "is the most important thing you can ever find in life. You get lucky with true love once. You are blessed with good friends a dozen times. You will always have a family whether you know it or not."

The old fool died of cancer when Rusty was nine, but those nine years were debatably the best of his life. Always a roof over his head, always food to eat, always books to read, games to play, movies to watch, and arms to cry in when things didn't go his way.

But then Charles Ryan died.

* * *

His first foster family taught him the healing powers of food.

A very elderly couple who had never been able to have children and regularly took in little boys and girls with nowhere else to go and gave them as much love as they had never been able to bestow upon their own blood.

Food was always available and Mr. Channy told him when he arrived that nothing soothes the soul like something warm and sweet.

And Mrs. Channy was always cooking, baking, serving snacks and desserts and gourmet meals. She was the stereotype for old ladies if ever there was one. She made sweaters, and scarves, and hats, and socks. And cookies. There were always cookies.

And then cancer, the most ironic of villains, came to haunt him again when Mrs. Channy fell ill and the couple had to give up their children for her treatment.

Rusty had tried to find them later when he was older and smarter and stronger and braver, but he found that after two long years of battling lung cancer, she had passed away. Mr. Channy died four months later because of the stress the depression took on his heart.

Rusty was eleven when he left the comfort of a loving home, and he would not find that comfort until several years later.

* * *

The Watsen's taught him that you always had to look put together.

They were a strict Catholic family - husband, wife, and their sixteen-year-old daughter Teresa - and they left no negotiating room for error or sin.

Rusty had been sick when he first arrived at their house, he'd been a right sickly thing back then, and when he'd thrown up on his bedroom floor, they lashed his hands, had him apologize to them and the Lord, and then made him clean up his own mess. He spent the rest of the night retching into the toilet as quietly as he could.

The next morning, he'd looked like death, slumped, and yawning, and looking like a zombie.

Mr. Watsen dragged his belt against his already welted fingers while Mrs. Watsen told him that if he was going to be sick, he had to look good while doing it. Their family and charge would not look imperfect. And the Watsen's would not suffer the embarrassment of a parentless orphan boy who could not even dress well.

He stayed with the Watsen's for almost a year, and for that year, he was always well-dressed and pleasant-looking, even as the red that never left his hands soured his personality and the upset looks made his expressions haughty.

The Watsen's approved of his progress, but not enough to keep him when a younger, healthier, more devoutly religious boy from church lost his most generous aunt.

He wasn't even twelve when they sent him back to his social worker.

* * *

Mr. Lane taught him to keep his mouth shut. Keep it busy with things other than words.

Mr. Lane was the kind of perverted rat who took in many young boys who all requested to leave and pleaded that this man was a monster, but who could never be proven a monster, and so kept his boys until he didn't want them anymore.

Whenever twelve-year-old Rusty made a mistake - room not spotless, plate not clean, shirt not sharply ironed (and he could thank the Watsen's for his ability to always sharply iron his shirts) - there were no lashes on his scarred hands, but there were fists in his cheeks and things shoved down his throat.

Kitchen cleaners. Later, Rusty wondered how he never died. Possibly, Lane knew that children couldn't stand things forced into their young and chatty mouths, so he never bought anything so dangerous that he could kill. So he used cleaning products, hand soap. Hand sanitizer, once, and vinegar. One night he brought home a bag full of peppers and spices and made a paste that turned the body to fire and made the choking it down prolong the lava.

And, more than Rusty could bear to admit - sometimes, he felt ill at the fact that he'd even told Danny - Lane took his lusts out on his boys.

Decades later, Rusty could never get the taste from his mouth. He could only ever chew his gum and eat his sweets like Mr. Channy had taught him and focus on the con, and only sometimes - late at night or when he was hungry and there wasn't anything around to put on his tongue and he was trying to listen to Danny - it would hit him. Sometimes he'd throw up. Sometimes he scald his mouth with whiskey. Sometimes knock on Danny's door and they simply drowned their respective troubles in alcohol and talk about flitting things.

* * *

One day, way back then, Rusty had decided to run away for the first time. He was thirteen and he filled his bag with his best clothes, the most filling snacks, and every last dollar he had been able to swipe from around the house and then directly from Lane in the week leading up to it. He left an apologetic note to the other three boys he was leaving behind, and then he snuck out of the back door and ran.

He only ever used cash, and if people asked, he was not little Robbie, he was Rusty, Mrs. Channy's favorite boy name.

He made it a few months, emptying Lane's card and tossing it. Staying in shelter's and avoiding any real authorities.

But his constant need for gum, snacks, candies, anything to occupy his mouth with made him slightly desperate and then reckless in his surviving endeavors. Wanting to save money for his busses and trains and washing machines - people trust you if you don't look like a homeless street rat - he began to practice his hand and swiping.

Dumb luck provided his victory the first time. The second, he made a plan all on his own and he took only what he needed. The third time was an unexpected opportunity when the cashier turned his back with the register open. He was able to buy his weight in Juicy Fruit with the funds he got from there. But by the fourth time, he was cocky and he was caught. They identified him as Robert Charles Ryan and sent him back to Lane.

Lane punished him with many delicate tortures, then, when the full extent of the little schemes he'd pulled reached the cruel man's ears, he sent him to the police, and the government decided that stricter measures than the kindness of his foster father were needed.

Rusty laughed gleefully when they took him to Juvie.

* * *

Juvie taught him many many things, one of the most important being how to school his emotions and thoughts into submission. He would have control of them, not the other way around.

Kids could be cruel, especially when some already had blood on their hands, and weakness was not tolerated. Weakness was punished with fists.

Rusty learned how to fight in Juvie. He learned how important charisma was in making friends, how important it was to smile around your anger because people are more scared of kindness when you're in trouble than they are of obvious fury.

Six months of a detention facility for his two trying to live and when he was out he was fourteen and it was back to the system where "well-behaved boy with troubled past" was written on his transcript when what he really was was a young man who was learning what his place was in life.

* * *

Sadie reminds him of what his father told him. Sadie shows him that he's smart. Sadie teaches him to enjoy the good things in life because they do not last forever.

Sadie was a school teacher who absolutely loved kids so much, that she never had time away from them to settle down with a man to give her her own. So she adopted instead.

Fresh out of Juvie - even though all of his experiences had made him a prime specimen for adopting, all mellow and obedient and pretty as he was - no one was willing to house a "criminal".

Except for Sadie Green, and her two adopted children, Paul and Johnny. Paul had a speech impediment that left him with sign language and notebooks for communication. Johnny was autistic. And no-so-little Robbie was just the criminal.

But Sadie never called him that. She and the boys went to movies every week. Her cooking was nowhere near as good as Mrs. Channy's, but she tried so hard and they all got laughs out of her failures.

One night in his own room - he was the oldest at fifteen while the other two were each ten - Rusty woke up screaming from a nightmare that had been too real and Mr. Lane had been there, as had a particularly evil boy he'd been tortured by in Juvie.

Sadie had come running, the other two had followed soon after and Johnny was crying. Sadie did not attempt to touch him much except to hold his hand and gently tell him that it was going to be okay, that no one could hurt him, that he was safe.

He had never been able to tell her why there were nightmares or why he always ate and chewed and drank or why he did not tolerate sweatpants. But he figured that Sadie somehow knew, though she never asked because she took her time loving him physically. She always kept extra Juicy Fruit on top of the fridge and she never bought him mismatching sets of pajamas.

It was the cruelest joke. The most remorseless irony.

He had learned to love Sadie in the year and a half she'd taken him in. She'd reminded him to love, cured him of his aversion to touching, allowed him to be himself. And she loved him.

Then breast cancer took her away.

Rusty was sixteen when Sadie's family took on her charges of Johnny and Paul, she'd been raising Paul for five and Johnny for three, but Rusty was not even two years familiar with them and he was a criminal.

Back into the system he went.

* * *

Loneliness and sadness partnered up with Dear Old Time, and together, they all taught Rusty to grow up for real.

He doesn't even remember the names of the next family who took him in because he packed his necessities and ran the first night. Even though he hated not knowing if the family deserved his stealing or not, he needed money to run, so he took as much as he could find, but he did not steal their cards.

He was almost seventeen and that would mean he would be almost eighteen and then he could be free of the government interference which had ensured that he could not be a child.

He learned from his mistakes when he was thirteen and he planned and plotted every minute of his life. Every wake-up call and bedtime, every penny spent, every lift made was planned. He left nothing to chance.

"The devil is in the details," he'd heard someone say once. He was sure, now, that he knew what that meant.

He got a job as swiftly as he could and holed up in the cheapest and dirtiest hotels he could find. The first day he set down there, he cleaned the place meticulously until his pockets were almost empty from the money he'd spent on cleaning supplies and he felt safe for the first time since Sadie's death when he went to bed in sheets that he'd practically chemical-bombed.

Swiftly, he'd realized people needed certain things to live.

Food, shelter, money, clothes, a job.

And the internet. And access to a phone. And transportation.

So he planned his plans and didn't neglect a single detail.

Everything was controlled and he found that he liked it. He liked having control of his life. He liked knowing everything would happen a certain way.

He worked his butt off every day, studied in the library all night to make up for all the schooling he had missed in his life and to ensure that he knew as much as he could about everything. More details to add to his plans. More insurance.

Everything controlled for two years until he was eighteen and he had his own apartment and worked as a manager at a car dealership.

And then he'd met the act of God named Daniel Ocean.

* * *

Rusty went exclusively by his "fake" name at that point, and he was as reputable and charming a manager as a dealership could have for a young man only eighteen and at night in the library, he planned small lifts and extra boosts for his livelihood.

The first "heist" - as he called it then when he was young and finally growing out of his sickly youth - he planned was in a local strip mall. He'd cased every one of the six stores and had plans to rob from each in one night. Every detail was planned out.

And he did it, and his addiction to _the life_ began then.

Maths and sciences turned to histories of thieves and how they did what they did and as he read and studied, there was the man who would ultimately become his best friend in the whole world. His partner. His brother.

Four years older.

Danny was twenty-two and Rusty was almost nineteen and Danny saw what he was reading and almost as if he was able to read Rusty's mind - a trait he had never been able to figure out but began to rely on in future plots and exhausted late nights, a trait he had been able to duplicate on Danny a few months later - he sat down across from him and introduced himself.

He talked for a while about the greatest robberies in the history of heists and who did them and how they were done. He mentioned that he knew several good thieves himself. Almost as well as he knew the back of his own hand.

Rusty had smiled. Innocently replied that he would be fascinated to meet such people.

And the rest, as they say, was history.


End file.
